De Blasio advises red-state Dems, who weren't asking

Mayor Bill de Blasio offered some unsolicited advice to red-state Democrats on Wednesday, suggesting they might have survived a Republican wave last week if they had only stuck to the "core principles" that helped him win in New York City last year.

De Blasio responded to Democrats' brutal losses last Tuesday in a Huffington Post opinion piece—followed by a radio interview and a national TV appearance—that encouraged Democrats to find their progressive "backbone" and talk more about income inequality.

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De Blasio pointed to Senate races in North Carolina, Kentucky and Arkansas, where "Democratic candidates didn't say much about progressive taxation, expanding health and retirement benefits, or implementing anti-poverty efforts like universal pre-k or affordable housing."

That came as news to some local operatives.

"I know Mayor de Blasio's got a big city to run, but it doesn't seem he paid totally close attention to the Arkansas Senate race or the issues Sen. Pryor ran on," said a top Democratic strategist in Arkansas.

"The crux of Sen. Pryor's campaign was protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits for Arkansas seniors and the campaign played a lot of offense on those core Democratic principles," he added, noting Pryor ran three TV ads touting parts of the Affordable Care Act (without mentioning the law by name).

Several Washington-based consultants told Capital that de Blasio's op-ed was received with a collective eye roll by Democrats who fought uphill battles in red states. Arkansas, North Carolina and Kentucky were each carried by Mitt Romney in 2012, and all three candidates were attempting to navigate around President Obama's unpopularity.

"There's no question that the electorate in New York City and the electorate in Arkansas are very different, but at the same time, Sen. Pryor's campaign ran on a slate of core Democratic principles that Mayor de Blasio seems to have overlooked," the Arkansas operative said.

(A spokesman for de Blasio declined to say whether the mayor had ever visited any of the three states.)

De Blasio has positioned himself as a national voice for the progressive wing of the party and his op-ed, published in the Huffington Post, was followed by appearances on Al Sharpton's radio show and an evening interview with Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

But his message for national Democrats was undercut by questions about his outspoken support for Governor Andrew Cuomo, an avowedly centrist Democrat, and the mayor's failed effort to help win the State Senate, despite the demographic advantages in New York State.

"The message of the op-ed is: Democrats who ran from those values got paid back for it," de Blasio said on MSNBC.

"So what category is Andrew Cuomo?" Hayes asked.

"I have a message for all Democrats, let's be clear," de Blasio said. "I would say it to him for sure. I think this is the wave of the future."

"That's not how he positioned himself," Hayes said, "His political position and he even said it—the extreme is to the left and right..."

"Look, he put forward a host of things that mattered a lot to progressives including marriage equality, including action for women's rights et cetera," de Blasio said. "So he had a progressive platform. But I'm arguing something that I think is transcendent nationally."

De Blasio failed to notch any notable victories this year at the state level, where he dispatched top aides to help Democrats reclaim the State Senate, but saw most of his preferred candidates defeated by double digit margins.

De Blasio pointed to the one exception, Marc Panepinto, who de Blasio said focused on the "real economic reality."

"[Panepinto] went right at the heart of the matter and he talked about the inequality crisis," the mayor told reporters. "He won where he wasn't supposed to win. I think other candidates didn't do as a good a job at that."

But Panepinto also benefited from a four-way race, with a divided Republican field, and he ultimately won with just 34 percent of the vote.

The mayor acknowledged it's easier for him to tilt left in a dependable Democratic stronghold like New York, but pointed out that he is the first Democratic mayor in 20 years. (His immediate predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, was a lifelong Democrat who ran as a Republican in 2001 and became unaffiliated with any party in 2007, and is frequently invoked by Republicans for supporting gun control measures.)

"I believe some of why we broke through last year was because we spoke to people's economic reality," de Blasio said. "The whole concept of the campaign was to say we're living a tale of two cities."